Disney's Diabolical Delusion DeliberatelyFuels Racism

Disney—the once-great corporation that was universally admired in the 1950s and 1960s is today deliberately working to help fuel racism amongst our most innocent citizens—young children.  A recent production of Disney’s “The Proud Family” put forth yet another false narrative about our nation’s history—that only Black slaves “built this nation” and that Blacks today deserve reparations “for every moment we spend submerged in this systemic prejudice, racism, and white supremacy that America was founded with and still has not atoned for.” To illustrate this last point, the cartoon showcases a picture of a young Black man with his palms turned up and the words “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” written on them. The film features predominately Black girls angrily denouncing the Founding Fathers and at one point shows the presidential images on Mount Rushmore being replaced with the likes of Harriett Tubman, Nat Turner, and Frederick Douglass—the “real” champions of freedom. Lincoln is deliberately snubbed as the girls proclaim “we can only free ourselves …. emancipation was not freedom.” No context, of course, is supplied for these outlandish charges—thus exposing the cartoon for the racist propaganda that it is. 

 Disney has certainly declined from the company that virtually every home was tuned in to watch in television’s formative years. In earlier times, Disney regularly featured wholesome, patriotic portrayals of America’s past that influenced generations of children. Recently, however, it has worked diligently to promote the Leftist goal to “fundamentally change America.” One executive producer has admitted she deliberately infused gay-lifestyle themes into as many productions as possible. Disney's Diversity and Inclusion Manager, Vivian Ware, led the effort to ditch the words ladies, gentlemen, boys, and girls in its theme parks in order to not alienate transgender children. The company has already pulled or posted warning labels to old movie favorites such as Dumbo, Peter Pan, Aristocats, Swiss Family Robinson, and Song of the South for their bing deemed offensive to minorities. It fired the conservative star of Mandalorian, Gina Carano, for posting to a social media site her criticism of attacks upon Republicans. Secretly recorded Critical Race Theory trainings for Disney staff have blamed all whites for systemic racism and instructed them to never “question or debate Black colleagues’ lived experience.” Disney’s white employees were also asked to complete a “white privilege checklist" with such qualifiers as “I am a man,” “I still identify as the gender I was born in,” and “I have never been raped.” Upon discovering this, Chris Rufo rightly argued that “the Magi Kingdom is a house of lies” because it has used slave and child labor, filmed “Mulan” near Uighur concentration camps, and censored its content for the Chinese Communist Party.  

But it's much worse than this. Disney's latest attempt to fundamentally change America illustrates the company's diabolical nature. The Proud Family episode deliberately distorts our nation's history. The fact that slavery was universal among cultures is ignored. There is no mention that North African and Ottoman Muslims enslaved millions of white Europeans for over 1,000 years. Children are intentionally left with the notion that only Black slaves "built this country." They are not informed that both Hinton Helper and Alexis de Tocqueville offered plenty of evidence that slavery--far from being responsible for all the nation's wealth--actually retarded the South's economic progress and development. There is no mention of the exploitation of Irish immigrants in the nation's coal mines and in the construction of our railroads and canals. Apparently the white farm girls who worked 13 hours daily in the Lowell Mills, the Chinese coolie laborers who built the Central Pacific Railroad, the immigrant miners who worked 364 days a year in our mines, the workers who were machine gunned during their labor strike at Ludlow, Colorado, and countless other examples of exploited non-Black victims who helped build this nation played no role in creating our nation's prosperity. Nor can we forgive Disney for helping to inflame the racial hatred and violence that currently engulfs America. The cartoon's attempt to reaffirm the lie surround the George Floyd case by promoting the phrase "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" in the cartoon is unpardonable. 

Far from succeeding in its goal of indoctrinating America’s children to the necessity of imposing racial reparations on the nation, Disney has only succeeded in showing how its militant cartoon characters are ignorant of real history. Disney intentionally promotes the falsehood that Black men are routinely shot down by police while trying to surrender with the cartoon’s ‘hands up’ scene. Meanwhile, the cartoon’s promotion of Nat Turner—a murderer who slew his master and his wife while they were sleeping in their bed at night and who ordered their infant child to be slaughtered in his crib—is a sad commentary of what passes today as acceptable viewing for children. Disney’s producers apparently didn’t know that Turner’s men decapitated the infant in its crib and threw its body into the fireplace. Nor that two other children were later beheaded. Nor that almost all of Turner’s victims were defenseless, unarmed women and children. And, according to Disney, this is the man who should be depicted on Mount Rushmore? 

 

Let’s not give Disney the benefit of the doubt here. The company has a litany of researchers and historians at its disposal who could give caution to its deliberate dissemination of racial bias and falsehood. These deliberate distortions of history and racial animus—far from bringing us closer together as a people— only serve to further divide us into ethnic and racial tribes. These falsehoods lead to the assassination of police officers, an increase in racially inspired hate crimes, and countless break-ins and robberies of businesses throughout the nation as “oppressed” individuals seek the ‘reparations’ they now think they deserve. 

 

Disney should apologize for its promotion of a murderer of children to an audience of children in the vague hope that we’ll somehow have better race relations in the future. 

 

__________   

Jack Bovee

Fort Myers, FL 
The writer has been a social studies educator, founder of Rho Kappa--the National Social Studies Honor Society--past president of the Florida Council for the Social Studies, and a former Elementary School Principal of the Year in Lee County, Florida. He may be reached at: jsbovee@aol.com.

 

Email:  JSBOVEE@aol.com      

How CRT Threatens the Lives of Innocent Americans

 Shortly after posting a terrorist rant to the internet around 8 am on Christmas Day, nineteen-year-old Jaswant Singh Chail was arrested inside the grounds of Windsor Castle with a cross-bow that he hoped to use to murder Queen Elizabeth II. Chail, who lived in a £500,000 semi-detached house in a private estate, announced his plan to kill the Queen because of the Empire’s massacre of Indian civilians at Amritsar in 1919.  In his posting, Chail clearly stated, “This is revenge for those who have died in the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre. It is also revenge for those who have been killed, humiliated and discriminated on because of their race. I’m an Indian Sikh, a Sith.” Not surprisingly, British authorities hauled the young man off for psychiatric evaluation. The possibility that he had been convinced through exposure to an overwhelming educational, governmental and social media onslaught of anti-Western, anti-Christian, and anti-white propaganda which convinced him that there was need for a revenge murder of the Queen never dawned upon elites within British society. One wonders if Chail’s high school exposure to Britain’s imperialistic history — which certainly covered the 1919 Amritsar massacre –- spent as much time on the earlier massacre of British men, women, and children at Cawnpore (Bibighar) in 1857. Probably not. Regardless, in this age of ‘WOKE’ anti-Western history the message of contemporary culture is clear—all whites are ‘oppressors’ and all non-whites are victims.

Recent events in our own country confirm the real threat that WOKE politics and Critical Race Theory present to ordinary Americans of white, European ancestry. Since the late 1960s, the work of revisionist historians has led us to this point. The Left won a significant victory in the culture war when in 1987 Jessie Jackson led 500 protestors at Stanford in chants of “Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho, Western Civ has got to go!”[1] Since then, the attack upon the basic tenets of European civilization has been non-stop. For a few decades, American’s of European descent have found themselves to be strangers on a majority of campuses’ that cater to every other culture.  Since George Floyd and the rise of Critical Race Theory throughout our society, they’ve found themselves the “enemy” of humanity and the world’s greatest “oppressors.” Our elites have worked to not only eliminate white males from Fifth Avenue corporate advertising; they’ve succeeded in vilifying white children as “privileged” and hopelessly “racist.” Racial hucksters like Richard Delgado, Robin DeAngleo, and Ibram X. Kendi have made millions off of what can only be called the “The New Acceptable Racism.” One of the prominent features of this new racism is the falsification of the past for the purpose of “fundamentally changing” America’s future—one that will be tied to global elites and authoritarian forms of government. To accomplish such a goal, it is necessary to destroy an America that has as its current goal the inalienable rights of the individual and the belief in equal opportunity for all. The weapon to achieve this is to argue that the nation is inherently and irredeemably racist. As it was built upon the over-riding principle of white supremacy, entire systems of education, governance, law, and religion must be ‘reimagined’ or ‘recreated.’ 

Every demagogue needs a scapegoat—Marxists’ had the bourgeoisie, Hitler the Jews, Stalin the Kulaks, Mao western imperialists, and Pol Pot—intellectuals. Today’s scapegoats in the United States are “whites.” Those who disagree are labeled not only wrong and arrogant, but “fragile” in their feelings if they are white and “Uncle Tom’s” if they are Black.[2]   

There can only be one consequence of this current attack upon traditional American institutions — a dangerously divided nation that is so weakened it can no longer function as a sovereign state let alone as “leader of the free world.”  A by-product of this is the current attempt to degrade whites through the deliberate use of weaponizing historical falsehoods to the point where non-whites openly call for their oppression and subjugation. 

History as a Weapon

An examination of the first step — the deliberate falsification of our past to illustrate how one evil race, whites, has mistreated all other races — may be illustrated through a few examples. It’s commonly accepted today that revisionist historians began false attacks upon our traditional history and culture decades ago. The effect has been nothing short of seismic. The current vilification of Columbus, begun by Kirkpatrick Sale in 1990, as a genocidal imperialist intent on conquest has been refuted by historians, but has nevertheless continued to be accepted in popular culture and Progressive circles.[3] The same may be said for the long-standing most popular book used on college campuses for decades, the very biased and overwhelmingly negative portrayal of our past by Howard Zinn, appropriately titled A People’s History of the United States.[4] From these and other contemporary writers on ethnic and racial studies such as Hanna Nicole-Jones or Ibram X. Kendi, historical events are routinely cherry-picked for the purpose of vilifying America’s past. Rather than attempting a comprehensive and balanced view of past events, these revisionist interpretations of our past are constructed through the deliberate omission of key facts. The Puritans, for example, are portrayed as genocidal expansionists who destroyed the Pequot tribe in 1637 — despite the fact the Native Americans who aided the English in this war outnumbered Puritans by more than four to one. Our Founding Fathers are demonized for permitting the institution of slavery within the Constitution—despite the belief of many of them that it was wrong and on the road to extinction. Their having to pick between having a united country with the means to overturn that institution or no country at all is seldom made clear. Nor, when discussing the origins of American slavery, is there mention that Africans and Ottomans actually enslaved Europeans for much longer time than American slavery.[5] 

Most current school textbooks never credit the United States with being unique in the history of the world in having fought a devastating war consuming 750,000 lives so that one race could free another from bondage.[6] In discussing the Mexican-American War, details of the ruthless execution of 350 Americans at Goliad is often omitted. Zinn, for example, is silent on this war crime. The list of such omissions goes on. It would seem obvious from a cursory review of world history that all cultures possessed expansionistic, nationalistic, and ethnocentric periods. That the United States did as well should be no surprise. The difference is that, thanks to the efforts of revisionist historians and educators whose specialty is ethnic studies, our nation has now lost any balanced or accurate portrayal of our past. Critical Race Theory has now so successfully permeated our educational and governmental institutions that arguments to deliberately identify and oppress all members of the white race as privileged and to bestow victimhood status and preferential benefits upon all members of non-white cultures seems almost irrefutable.

Hollywood Propaganda

The falsification of history through omission is further aided by elements within our popular culture. Within the rap music industry there are strong elements of resisting all forms of authority, hatred of police, the glorification of crime, and the dehumanization of women. In several popular Hollywood movies such as Django Unchained, Lincoln, and Birth of a Nation, American history is deliberately falsified to leave desirable impressions upon the audience. All too often, the audience lacks the historical knowledge to know what aspects of racial hatred portrayed in the films represents authentic events and what is propaganda. The result is that all too many viewers believe and accept “fake history.”

Take Quenton Tarantino’s revisionist Django Unchained – a film that glorifies violence and racism through fictionalized events. White racism and hatred toward Blacks is an overriding theme and Django—a former slave—is able to exact revenge against a wide array of evil white characters. Even the main star, Black actor Jamie Foxx, joked while hosting Saturday Night Live that he starred in the movie and--"I get to kill all the white people in the movie. How great is that?"--to a predominantly white cheering audience.[7] Even critics who loved the movie, admitted it had problems. Peter Bradshaw, film critic for The Guardian--who gave it five stars--described it as "unwholesome, deplorable, and as delicious as a forbidden cigarette."[8] Writing in the New York Times, critic A.O. Scott described Django as "crazily entertaining, brazenly irresponsible and also ethically serious in a way that is entirely consistent with its playfulness." Playfulness? In the way Jamie Foxx joked? The New Yorker's Anthony Lane didn't see it that way. He was "disturbed by their [Tarantino's fans'] yelps of triumphant laughter, at the screening I attended, as a white woman was blown away by Django's guns."

Renowned Hollywood actor, Steven Spielberg, similarly distorts real history in his award-winning Lincoln. Aside from angering many outstanding historians by having Lincoln utter uncharacteristic "godd - - - s" in the movie, two totally fictional scenes regarding race are woven into the epic film. In one scene Lincoln sits alone as Union troops--black and white--are being shipped off for the attack against Wilmington in 1865. He interacts with two Black soldiers and discovers one has been fighting for over two years. The younger Black soldier, however, repeatedly interrupts the conversation in order to lecture Lincoln about the unequal treatment of Negro troops and the slow pace of equality. He sarcastically notes that perhaps one hundred years hence, Blacks may finally be afforded the right to vote. They are joined by two white soldiers who are deliberately portrayed as less patriotic, less cerebral, and less aware of the importance of what's at stake in this war. When one asks Lincoln how tall he is, the other exclaims "Geez, shut up." They admit they've only just joined the Union cause, but that they were present as civilians at Gettysburg to hear Lincoln's speech. When Lincoln asks them if they remember what he said there, one responds, "No, not much," They try to recite portions of it, but stumble in the attempt to recollect Lincoln's most memorable words. As the soldiers are called away, the lone impertinent Black soldier is left standing alone with Lincoln. He slowly walks away flawlessly reciting Lincoln's vision of the nation having "a new birth of freedom." The director makes it a point to show the audience that, unlike the white soldiers, this more militant Black soldier fully grasps the real meaning of the Civil War. In another scene Speilberg deliberately uses Black soldiers to officially escort members of a Southern Commission on Peace to meet secretly with Lincoln. In reality, Lincoln was wise enough to not have so deliberately insulted Southern attempts to reach a peaceful end to the war--no Black troops actually escorted the Confederates safely to the meeting. Speilberg is a master at pulling the emotional strings of his viewing audience, but overstating the patriotic contributions of Black soldiers to the success of Northern arms and his implied denigration of white soldiers to the cause of freedom through these fictionalized events were both unnecessary. 

Perhaps the worst piece of Hollywood racial propaganda is Nate Parker’s “Birth of a Nation.” His movie suffers from the same propagandistic weaknesses as D.W. Griffith’s 1915 film of the same title, but with none of the breakthrough filming techniques of the original. Parker presents a heroic though fictionalized view of Nat Turner—leader of the largest slave revolt in U.S. history—with himself in the lead role. To accomplish this, Parker creates false scenes that deliberately demonize southern whites and he omits real facts that present a negative view of Turner. One of the falsehoods in the film portrays Turner being whipped for daring to baptize a white man during a religious revival. Another is Turner's being hit for simply returning to a white child a doll she had dropped. Another is his supposed marriage to a slave woman who is gang-raped and brutally beaten by white men. Yet another is his master’s consent to the request of another white man to be allowed to rape one of his female slaves. Still others are his successful seizure of the town of Jerusalem, Virginia, only to be ambushed there, and Nat’s being the only slave to escape. Fnally, Nat is falsely portrayed as turning himself in order to spare the lives of innocent slaves who are being murdered in retaliation for his revolt. The film ends with Nat courageously heading toward his fate on the gallows. In a Christ-like gesture he is seen forgiving a sobbing young black child who betrayed his cause and now—like Judas—regrets what he has done. The film ends with presumably this same boy having grown up and now fighting as a Union soldier to achieve Turner’s goal of ending slavery. 

In addition to the many falsehoods designed by Parker to deliberately portray Turner as heroic, he omitted key facts that would have portrayed the man negatively. Viewers do not see Turner as the murderer of mostly white women and children, even sleeping infants. Nor do they see his master and his wife brutally murdered with an axe as they sleep. They do not see him murdering young Margaret Whitehead by repeatedly stabbing her with a sword and then bashing her head in with a fence rail. Nor are realistic scenes of children being decapitated portrayed. [9]

Nate Parker, however, attested to the overall accuracy of events portrayed in the film. At the Toronto International Film Festival he insisted the film was predominantly grounded in fact saying, “For me, historical accuracy was very important.”[10]  Historian David Breen, author of an acclaimed history of the Turner revolt, weighed in on the accuracy of Parker’s movie. In addition to the above inaccuracies, Dr. Breen described as "false" the charge that hundreds of Blacks were indiscriminately killed in retaliation for Turner’s killing spree. 

Other parts of Parker's indictment against America describe other places but not Nat Turner's Virginia. For example, the indiscriminate lynching that Parker notes led to hundreds of deaths in Southhampton actually did not happen. In Southhampton, slaves were the most valuable form of property and tax records reveal that whites killed roughly three dozen slaves as the revolt was put down. Some of these murdered blacks were surely innocent, but the rebel force numbered about sixty at its peak, which suggests that the vast majority of those killed after the revolt were in fact rebels or their allies. [11]

In reality, Turner was the property of four men. In the film, however, Parker portrays Samuel Turner as his single master and a cruel drunk who pimps out the wife of Nat’s best friend. In real life, Turner described Turner differently—as a “kind master in fact….I had no cause to complain of his treatment of me.”[12]

In his review of the film, Ronald Davis acknowledges that “the film takes wide liberties with history” and that “…some members of the audience inevitably will absorb the film as a factual representation.”[13] More will do so when the director openly professes that “historical accuracy was very important” to his work. And this is the danger that such films present to our racially divided nation. A prominent Black journalist and former African-American studies major admitted the film contained “unforgiveable historical inaccuracies” –- the greatest of which was what motivated his revolt in the first place. Rather than the fictional rape of a supposed wife which Nat never acknowledged in life, almost all the evidence points to Nat’s religious convictions and divine visions as being the inspiration for the rebellion. "The rape plot device was unnecessary, awkward, uncomfortable and poorly executed. By inserting it, 'Birth of a Nation' tainted the sacred history of one of the greatest figures in black history."[14] When this reviewer was told by colleagues that as a Black man, he shouldn't be critical of the movie, he responded, "I do not support films blindly ... Historical accuracy--at least in the broad facts, if not the small details--is paramount."[15]

Needless to say, however, despite the occasional critical review, Parker won huge acclaim from the predominantly white film industry for this lopsided portrayal of Turner. He did so despite previous rape accusations from 1999 against both himself and his co-writer, Jean Celestin, which re-surfaced at the time. His accuser, an 18-year-old 4.0 GPA white female student at Penn State University who claimed she was intoxicated and sexually assaulted by Parker and his roommate, twice attempted suicide after being continually harassed by Parker on campus. Distraught over what she considered the university’s lack of support for her gang rape charges—she later won a court settlement against Penn State—she eventually took her own life in 2012.[16] Her sister wrote several scathing editorials about Nate Parker—whom she blamed for her sister’s death—as his movie won wide acclaim and was seriously being hailed as the major contender for the Academy Award.[17]

Ronald Davis ended his 2016 review by stating, Nate Parker's The Birth of a Nation should be seen not for its historic content but for its commentary of this moment in American history.[18] No statement could be more welcome by everyone in today's hostile political divide. Thoroughly fictionalized accounts in which one race is deliberately demonized in what can only be called works of racial-propaganda obviously does little to advance an honest conversation about race relations in America. On the contrary, such untruths helped lead to increased racial violence and intolerance. "Birth" came out during a time of racially based 'knock-out game' attacks upon innocent Americans and an increased emphasis on racially incendiary educational workshops based upon Critical Race Theory. Worse still, such falsehoods contributed to the call for our nation to return to a period of judging Americans solely by the color of their skin. As Critical Race theorist Ibram X. Kendi has written, "The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination."[19] The new discrimination being called for, of course, is leveled now solely against whites and should continue until every measure of equity and all statistical disparities between Blacks and whites are erased. Average annual incomes among ethnic and racial groups in America apparently don't count. CRT advocates ignore the fact that American citizens from India, Japan, Korea, Nigeria, and many other non-English and non-white groups already exceed the average annual incomes of whites.

What's at Stake

The current demands for equity, not equality, threaten to destroy the nation's progress toward the achievement of a color-blind society. BLM and CRT activists, in fact, no longer believe in color blind policies but rather in color-conscious ones. For these extremists, affirmative action policies that have permitted systematic discrimination against white males for the past 60 years are no longer enough. In demanding equity of outcome in all aspects of life among racial groups, positive discriminatory practices against all whites must occur in every area where any disparity in outcomes is found. All such disparities, they argue, are the result of white supremacist doctrines and all whites, regardless of income or individual circumstance, benefit from "white privilege." Thus, to erase current racial health disparities such as infant mortality or life expectancy, New York City has recently determined in the name of equity to prefer non-whites over whites when dispensing life-saving anti-Covid medicines.[20] Similarly, when Oakland's Progressive mayor, Libby Schaaf, unveiled a program to provide financial aid to low income families, it was made clear no white family would be eligible for aid because the average family income for whites was above the norm.[21] Due to her use of average incomes among the races, none of the city's 10,000 whites would living in poverty could be considered. Such race-based preferential policies that benefit minorities are sweeping across the nation and pose a danger to all Americans. For example, because Black males are "disproportionately arrested" for drive-by shootings, Washington state Democrats are pushing to reduce penalties for such crimes. In one Texas county alone, 156 people were killed by violent criminals for whom little or no bond was required.[23] Efforts to bring equity in arrests by race only result in the death of more innocent Americans of all races.

In addition to Hollywood propaganda, there are considerable forces within our current political and social climate that foster animus between the races. Today, entire industries are devoted to ameliorating the harmful effects of race in our society. Diversity experts abound throughout business, government and academia. Mandatory 'white privilege' workshops are a common cultural phenomenon. Moreover, any difference in end outcomes between members of legally protected minorities and non-protected groups (whites) is now attributed to racially adverse practices, even if there is no intent to discriminate. Thus, higher school graduation rates for white students are today seen as prima facie evidence of racial discrimination against Black pupils. This theory, known as "disparate impact," is cited by educators and lawyers to bring countless lawsuits against innocent plaintiffs who argue other factors are responsible for the disparity. This same reasoning is applied to those who dare claim "all" lives matter when faced with today's racial activists who proclaim that only "Black lives matter." Black Lives Matter (BLM) activists see the statement "all lives matter" as insulting and racist. Those who disagree with BLM on this statement have been routinely fired from their jobs, occasionally assaulted, and even killed. [24]

Is there evidence that Hollywood’s falsely depicting racial incidents contribute to increased racial tension and even violence against whites today? A cursory review of statements by those arrested for acts of racial violence suggests this may be the case. Today, when the national media deliberately try to ignore hostility toward whites, postings by ordinary citizens to Twitter and Facebook contain dozens of such examples. When the crimes are so egregious that it’s necessary to report on them, as in the case of the accused murderer Darrell Brooks in Waukesha, WI--who used his SUV to deliberately run down and injure over 40 white Christmas revelers--the stories lack follow-up and important incriminating evidence posted to social media sites is censored.[25]

When taken in their entirety, it's clear that the basic tenets of Critical Race Theory and its advocates pose a real threat to the safety and lives of innocent Americans who by birth happen to be white. They are, however, but one arrow in the quiver of activities designed to "fundamentally change" America. Efforts to end the federal system of government by continually resorting to national programs that eviscerate the protections of the 10th Amendment, the current use of a supreme authority vested in an authoritarian chief executive who acts against the pinciples of the Constitution's separation of powers, and the open vilification of our justice system, law enforcement agencies, and the our military all seek the same goal. Indoctrination at all levels of our educational systems, control of our national media, an oppressive taxation and vilification of the rich, and an open borders invasion that first dilutes and then destroys an American electorate founded upon democratic and traditional family values may soon succeed in forever erasing our democratic legacy.

ENDNOTES

[1] Robert Curry. “Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho, Western Civ Has Got to Go,” (Charlemagne Institute: June 11, 2019). Web. Accessed HERE .  [ https://www.intellectualtakeout.org/article/hey-hey-ho-ho-western-civ-has-got-go/ ].

[2] Robin DeAngelo. White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard For White People to Talk About Racism, (Beacon Press: Boston, 2018).

[3] William H. McNeil. "Review of the 'The Conquest of Paradise' by Kirkpatrick Sale", (New York Times: October 7, 1990.) Accessed HERE, December 30, 2022. 

[4] Roger Kimball. “Professor of Contempt: The Legacy of Howard Zinn”, (National Review: New York, February 3, 2010).  Accessed HERE  December 30, 2022.

[5] Jack Bovee. “The Biggest Lie of Critical Race Theory”.  Accessed HERE, December 30, 2022.  

[6] Jennie Cohen. “Civil War Deadlier than Previously Thought?”  Accessed HERE, December 27, 2022.

[7] "jamie Foxx Jokes About Killing 'All the White People'", (Fox Nation: December 10, 2012.) Archived from the original on May 11, 2013. Retrieved December 31. 2021.  

[8] Peter Bradshaw. "Django Unchained--first look review," The Guardian: London. Archived from the original on December 17, 2013. Retrieved December 12, 2012. 

[9] Stephen B. Oates. "Children of Darkness," American Heritage v 23 Issue 6: (October 1973). Accessed HERE on December 22, 2021. 

[10] Patrick H. Breen. "'Birth of a Nation,' The Historian's Review: A Scholar Considers the Past in Parker's Movie for Today", (Deadline: October 7, 2016),  Accessed HERE on December 22, 2021. 

[11] Ibid.

[12] Breen.

[13] Ronald Davis. "Historical Perspectives on The Birth of a Nation (2016)." (Not Even Past: December 12, 2016). Accessed HERE on December 22, 2021.

[14] Clay Cane. "Birth of a National: A Historical Injustice," (CNN: August 7. 2016). Accessed HERE, December 22, 2021.  

[15] Ibid. 

[16] "Ex-Wrestler gets new trial in assault case," (Daily Collegian: November 1, 2005.) Accessed HERE, December 22, 2021. 

[17] Sharon Loeffler. "Nate Parker's 'Birth of a Nation' Exploits My Sister All Over Again," (Variety: September 29, 2016). Accessed HERE on December 23, 2021. 

[18] Davis. 

[19] Ibram X. Kendi. How to be an Anti-Racist, (New York: One World Press, 2019). 

[20] John Levine. "NYC will consider race when distributing life-saving COVID treatments," (New York Post: January 1, 2022.) Accessed HERE May 14, 2022).

[21] Bevan Hurley. "City of Oakland Mayor is Branded Racist..." (Daily Mail: March 24, 2021). Accessed HERE on May 14, 2022. 

[22] Jordan Boyd. "Washington State Democrats Want to Pull Back Penalties for Drive By Shootings," (The Federalist: December 31, 2021). Accessed HERE on May 14, 2022.

[23] Louis Casiano."Texas' largest county sees more that 150 killed by suspects out on bonds, victims group says," (Fox News: January 4, 2022.). Accessed HERE on May 14, 2022.)  

[24] Kyle Morris. "Former Football Coach Fired...." (Fox News: December 4, 2021). See also: Joshua Rhett Miller, "NJ Cop FIRED for Post Berating BLM Rioters as 'Terrorists'" (NY Post: May 4, 2021, available HERE) and Rowan Dean, "People Cancelled, Silenced, and Shot for Saying All Lives Matter," Australian Sky News: July 18, 2020.) Available HERE. 

[25] "Suspect in Wisconsin Christmas parade killing has long criminal record, released on bail just days before," (Life Site News: November 23, 2021). Available HERE. 

To download a PDF version of this opinion piece, click HERE.  

---------

Jack Bovee

Fort Myers, Florida. 

The writer has been a social studies educator, founder of Rho Kappa--the National Social Studies Honor Society--past president of the Florida Council for the Social Studies, and a former Elementary School Principal of the Year in Lee County, Florida. He may be reached at: jsbovee@aol.com.

Identity Politics

A published version of this appeared in American Thinker and may be accessed "HERE".

     In 2020 The Simpson’s voice actor Hank Azaria (a Caucasian man) said he would no longer perform Apu’s voice (an Indian character). For nearly thirty years no one had a problem with this, but all of a sudden it became a cause for concern. Why is it that something which was perfectly acceptable by practically everyone for so long suddenly became verboten? It would seem, even to a casual observer, that doing accents is one of the primary trademarks of acting. 

This relatively recent trend in Hollywood has gone so far that on June 30, 2020 The Babylon Bee (a satirical website) ran a parody where Alyssa Milano began a new movement with the hashtag ‘#takethepledge.’ In the satire she states, “Actors should not act like people they are not.” Sadly, it was not as far fetched as the humorists had intended. 

In the 2019 movie “The Upside,” able-bodied actor Bryan Cranston received flak for playing a disabled man confined to a wheel chair. He defended himself by saying that he was entitled to play characters whose attributes and abilities differed from his own, "If I, as a straight, older person, and I'm wealthy, I'm very fortunate, does that mean I can't play a person who is not wealthy, does that mean I can't play a homosexual? I don't know, where does the restriction apply, where is the line for that?" he told the Press Association. 

Back in 2005, there was an uproar in the Deaf community over a New York adaptation of Carson McCuller's "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" in which the central character John Singer (who is deaf and mute) is played by a hearing actor. On October 18, 2009 “Curb Your Enthusiasm” Season 7 Episode 5 aired and Larry David came under fire for his use of not one but two actresses who can walk playing wheelchair users. Scarlett Johansson, Tilda Swinton, Jack Whitehall, Ed Skrein, Abigail Breslin, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Dwayne Johnson are among some other actors who have faced criticism for playing disabled characters.

In 2018 actor Darren Criss said he would no longer accept LGBT scripts because he did not want to be "another straight boy taking a gay man's role." Britain's Ben Whishaw (an openly gay actor) expressed sentiments similar to that of Bryan Cranston's after winning a Golden Globe for playing a gay man in A Very English Scandal. "I really believe that actors can embody and portray anything and we shouldn't be defined only by what we are. On the other hand, I think there needs to be greater equality," he continued. "I would like to see more gay actors playing straight roles. It should be an even playing field for everybody. That would be my ideal," he concluded.

It is interesting how this principle seems only to apply to straight, able-bodied, Caucasian men. For over 30 years a woman named Nancy Cartwright has performed Bart Simpson’s voice, and no one ever batted an eye. In 2022 Mark Ruffalo played a straight man in “The Adam Project,” and no one said a word about it. Sean Penn played gay activist Harvey Milk in 2008, but he has been grandfathered in due to his bona fides as a progressive warrior. Where was the outrage when Kevin Spacey was portraying non-pedophiles? In the current day age of absurd superhero movies, films about time travel and space exploration, and other such fantastical subjects, it seems odd to fixate so unbendingly on who exactly may be allowed to play certain specific roles. In any case, there was an actor who expressed a more sensible and preferable take. Actor Andrew Garfield said it best, “If we only let people play exactly who they are, it’ll be the death of imagination.”

Jean-Marc Bovee, PharmD retired
St. Louis, MO

    

Fabricating Division

In 2016, a YouTube movie review channel known as RedLetterMedia posted a video discussing the deceits surrounding, and controversy at the time regarding the new Ghostbusters movie featuring four female protagonists in replacement of the original all-male cast. The nature of their video could be used as an example to illustrate how much our current day politics suffers from the same types of deceptions vis-à-vis the Wag the Dog nature of them. It is a sad yet fascinating commentary on how propaganda can manipulate people’s perceptions and thus their view of reality. It also exposes the ‘monkey see monkey do’ nature of too many of us, and how easily we can succumb to groupthink.

For instance, the original Ghostbusters 2016 trailer had an inordinate number of downvotes (970,322), which Sony Entertainment and the entertainment media chalked up to a massive preponderance of sexism, misogyny, and, of course, racism (that ostensibly run rampant throughout our culture). What they failed to grasp was that the math did not add up to support this contention. The trailer had 38,045,852 total views meaning that only 2.5% of those who viewed it clicked the ‘dislike’ button. Also, there were only 279,282 comments posted, which means only 0.73% of people veined to leave a remark. In other words, 99.27% of people who saw the trailer did not bother to comment on it at all. 

In an effort to stoke the flames further, for increased publicity and thus interest presumably, Sony began deleting relatively benign and civil comments critical of the trailer and left only the more vile ones. This gave more notice to the hate-filled misogynistic comments, and thus the impression that they were par for the course. This would lead to articles such as that on May 2, 2016, by Tom Huddleston titled, ‘New Female Ghostbusters Trailer is Bringing Out the Misogynists.’ News stories were everywhere about man-children, their bigotry, and the injustice to what was, in all honesty, a very unfunny movie and its terrible trailer. The fellas at RedLetterMedia cited an article by The_Night_Rider on March 7, 2016, titled ‘Sony Rigging Ghostbusters Comments?’ It was concluded that these antics would presumably give Sony a review embargo of sorts and an angle with which to market the movie. 

Then Sony handpicked reviewers and bloggers to attend early screenings of the film. Apparently, they paid people to see the movie once it came out, and lie about how much they enjoyed it. On March 12, 2002, CBS News’ Bootie Cosgrove-Mather reported, ‘Sony Pays for Fake Reviews.’

So, one can begin to see how relatively simple it is to artificially create a narrative. Ultimately, there was an insignificant number of hateful comments posted and Sony, along with their accomplices in the entertainment media, exacerbated a relatively minuscule issue besmirching the American culture and society in the process. According to Mike Stoklasa at RedLetterMedia, “They were able to ignite a fraudulent movement based on a dumb, unfunny ‘comedy’ film.”  

Now, who is to say that our government and their lackeys in the mainstream media do not do the exact same sort of thing on a daily basis for the purpose of misleading the public on a whole host of issues. Remember when Nancy Pelosi besmirched the TEA Party (who merely felt they were being overtaxed) by claiming she saw swastikas at their rallies? There was no evidence of this, but it did not matter. It made it into the zeitgeist anyway. Same thing happened with the Michael Brown ‘Hands Up Don’t Shoot’ fiasco, which never happened. Who could forget how NBC News doctored George Zimmerman’s call regarding Trayvon Martin in an effort to make him look racist? I recall when a MSNBC reporter referred to Black Lives Matter protests in Minneapolis as “mostly peaceful” while buildings burned behind him. Look at how quickly people were willing to buy into Jussie Smollett’s bald-faced lie that he was assaulted by racist MAGA supporters. 

Remember this when the powers that be try to tell you that there is a racist white supremacist behind every tree, or that there is a rape culture on college campuses, or that there are widespread weekly school shootings, or that there is an epidemic of police shooting unarmed black people, or that trans women are women (while Lia Thomas crushes the competition), or the current ‘Gay’ misinformation campaign regarding Florida’s recent bill is homophobic despite that fact that this word is nowhere within it), or that the ‘science’ declares for safety that we wear masks, lockdown for years, get a mandatory vaccine (or get fired), get mandatory booster after booster, et cetera, et cetera. The time has come to open our eyes, read between the lines, critically analyze the news, think for ourselves, and draw our own conclusions based on facts, stats, and wisdom. 

Jean-Marc Bovee, PharmD retired
St. Louis, MO

Comments to Erie's JES on Tanya Teglo's Series

(links to Ms. Teglo's JES Articles "here" and "here")

MEMO to:

Pat Cuneo, JES Publications Coordinator    cuneo@jeserie.org
Ferki Ferati, President       ferati@jeserie.org
Ben Speggen, Vice President      speggen@jeserie.org

Re:  Tanya Teglo’s “King Arrest Thrust Police Brutality into Spotlight”-- Feb. 2022
        Tanya Teglo’s “The Story of Amadou Diallo” – February 2022

Date:  February 26, 2022

Once again JES is to be congratulated for having as a major focus during Black History Month many excellent articles detailing the vast and significant contributions African-Americans have made to our nation.  The role JES plays in educating the Erie Community to not only its past, but also how residents can work together towards ensuring a brighter future with equal opportunity for all is heartily applauded.

Unfortunately, it’s sometimes hard to adequately safeguard readers from possibly biased distortions of the historical record. A case in point is the recent publication of several JES articles authored by African-American Studies expert Tanya Teglo. Today, when many citizens weren’t around during the arrest of Rodney King or the police shooting of Amadou Diallo, most readers are tempted to accept her version of the events. In neither case does she mention even a single mitigating fact that led police officers to be found not guilty in both cases. Sadly, Teglo went on to deliberately distort reality with this false statement: 

Some of the most widely known instances of the use of racial profiling that had deadly consequences were the cases involving Eric Garner, Treyvon Martin, Brionna Taylor, George Floyd, and many others.     

“Racial profiling” deaths? When Ms. Teglo so distorts reality she not only does a disservice to her readers, she stokes the flames of unjustified racial hatred and the continued racial division in our nation. 

It would be a hard sell to demonstrate police racial profiling in any of the individual cases cited by Ms. Teglo. Eric Garner had been arrested more than 30 times for selling black market cigarettes and police were called to the scene after he was observed once again committing an illegal act. Garner resisted arrest which led to his death, the events of which are still surrounded by controversy. Treyvon Martin might have been profiled by a non-police officer, but his own very violent assault upon George Zimmerman was the cause of his justifiable death. Breonna Taylor was under police surveillance for many reasons and therefore wasn’t “profiled” without cause.  She had rented a car, which was later involved in a murder, and a former drug-selling boyfriend had both used her address and kept large sums of drug money in her home. While exercising a legal search warrant at her home, Ms. Taylor was unfortunately killed in a police shoot-out with her boyfriend. George Floyd was not racially profiled but died while resisting arrest after officers had been called to the scene for his attempt to pass a counterfeit bill and for his drunken state behind the wheel of a car. 

Unfortunately, this wasn’t the only time Ms. Teglo engaged in distorting past events. In another article related to the arrest of Rodney King, she gave a totally inadequate description of what took place. Like most of the readers of her story, Ms. Teglo herself may be ignorant of the fact two other Black males were in the vehicle driven by Mr. King that fateful night. Bryant Allen and Freddie Helms exited the car, complied with police instructions, and were able to go home afterward.  Mentioning to readers the fact that two other Black males who complied with instructions were not “brutalized” by a racist LA police force, of course, would not fit in with her narrative that America still suffers from systematic racism. 

It’s fine that Ms. Teglo drew attention to the still existing video of the King beating—something that offended the sensibilities of all Americans. What she ignored in her description of the event, however, was his behavior beforehand that led to that beating. She failed to mention that he endangered innocent lives as he drove intoxicated through residential neighborhoods at speeds up to 80 miles per hour, running at least one red light. She doesn’t inform readers that King refused to leave his vehicle and when he did, he was laughing and pointing to the police helicopter above, making officers afraid that he was high on drugs. Refusing police commands and grabbing for his buttocks, King led officers to draw their guns in the belief he was reaching for a weapon. Fortunately, a police sergeant ordered them to holster their weapons and subdue him by physical force. This possibly saved his life, but resulted in his severe beating. While on the ground, for example, King was tasered but was still able to rise and charge toward one officer, resulting in the heavy use of batons to subdue him.  It is at this point that the famous videotape of his beating begins. Observing it out of context as she asks her readers to do, leaves viewers unaware of these events that led to the final use of police batons. One wonders if Ms. Teglo is herself aware of these facts. It may be the case she was but simply chose to ignore informing her readers of them. 

In her narrative, Ms. Teglo also appears to leave the reader with the impression the police officers got off scot-free. She took the time to cite the names of all four officers who faced charges in King’s case, even giving their ages, and that they “were acquitted on all charges.” She neglected to mention, however, even one mitigating reason for their acquittal or how their lives were ruined as a result of their role that night.   In summary, Ms. Teglo’s narrative does little to explain why both the trial of the officers and the resulting riots—which severely injured and took the lives of many innocent persons who were not speeding drunk through LA nor resisting arrest—was so controversial. 

The list of other neglected facts in her narrative is telling. There is no mention of the disparate statistical criminal anomalies that exist between the races. “Blacks between the ages of ten and 43 die of homicide at 13 times the rate of whites, according to the CDC…”  (For a more complete analysis of racial crime rates, I’ll refer you to an email I sent to your office last June as a result of another anti-law enforcement narrative. I’ve attached it for your convenience.) No mention that Black males are more likely to be struck by lightning than killed by police. 

If Tanya Taylor is interested in pursuing some real profiling that is happening in America today she may want to turn her investigative skills toward finding what group is mostly involved in the current spate of Asian hate crimes that have plagued our nation.  She might wish to cover a history of what group was mostly involved in the widespread “Knock-out Game” which saw dozens of citizens seriously injured for the benefit of a nice upload on Twitter. She might want to verify the accuracy of the report the Blacks commit the majority of hate crimes in America. Investigative journalist Daniel Greenfield’s review of FBI records for 2019 revealed, “The FBI statistics point to the reality that black people are committing hate crimes at twice their demographic representation.” He notes the number of whites committing hate crimes was most likely heavily distorted because the FBI counts Latinos who were charged with such a crime as white. Even given the gang-related animosities between Latinos and Blacks, which entered into the total number of whites committing hate crimes, whites committed only 52% of such crimes whereas Blacks committed 24%. Greenfield adds, “It should also be noted that law enforcement is usually more reluctant to address hate crimes against white people, requiring a higher standard of proof, so these numbers are underreported.”  In reviewing these crimes over several years, he points out the percentage of overall hate crimes committed by whites declined while the percentage committed by Blacks increased. 

So why do I take the time to write you on such a trivial matter about Ms. Teglo’s personal opinion? Why pick on her article, the main points of which were to relate American music to the Civil Rights Movement? I do so because she chose to enter into the current false narrative about police profiling and its deadly consequences for today’s Black men. It’s because her views represent a much larger pattern that seems to now have taken control of America’s newsrooms, educational institutions, the federal government, and corporate boards. Despite evidence that proves such narratives wrong, widespread support for them has resulted in exacerbating racial divisions in our country. For years, false accusations in “historical” movies such as Nate Parker’s Birth of a Nation, incendiary racial statements from noted athletes such as Colin Kaepernick and LeBron James, and an increasing number of hate crime hoaxes against whites by Jessie Smollett-type Black accusers, have all played a major role in creating further racial divisions in our nation.  What is needed to restore faith in our institutions is an honest approach to race relations in which such opinions are not censored, but balanced and where news journalists hold those who hold such narratives accountable.  

To continue with the current unbalanced and inaccurate portrayal of America as a hopelessly racist nation that oppresses minorities will only lead to more incidents such as Darrell Brooks’ mowing down innocent families because of their race with his vehicle last Christmas. It’s fine for Ms. Teglo to use a racist comment attributed to Bull Connor from 60 years ago while discussing the influence of songwriters to the Civil Rights movement. It’s wrong, however, for her opinion about police profiling leading to the deaths of Breonna Taylor, Eric Garner, or George Floyd to go unchallenged. 

It is just as wrong for JES to commit to only one side of the discussion on the national topic of race. For a second time, I urge the Society to enlist a conservative writer to lend balance to your views. Another possibility is to allow a moderated ‘comments section’ for your articles which would permit an open forum for your readers. Former Attorney General Eric Garner once accused us of being ‘cowards’ on the subject of race. I agree. When our national media ignored a racist diatribe against whites with the call for their “extermination” by an African-American professor during a televised C-SPAN debate at Howard University and when it maintains a current silence on the beliefs and motives of Darrell Brooks, we won’t solve the racial problem’s in America until we have the courage to express fairly and openly facts about both past and current events. 

ENDNOTES (send to the JES with the original email and coming here soon)

Chris Rufo -- "The Price of Dissent"

Investigative reporter Chris Rufo exposes the fallacies related to, and the dangerous risks involved, for those who dare to question the BLM movement in America today.  The author's three points of analysis reveals an intent that requires scrutiny. 

Rufo's OP ED: "click HERE" 

The statistician's report which led to his being fired: "click HERE"

Who Are the Insurrectionists?

 It's pretty hard to beat this editorial by Victor Davis Hanson, posted January 2022, about the many ways Progressives are working to "fundamentally change/destroy" America. While they conduct biased Congressional hearings on what they and the media refer to as the "Insurrection of January 6th"--comparing it to Pearl Harbor or the 9/11 Terrorist Attack--Dr. Hanson lists the many ways their acts represent a far more dangerous threat to our Republic and to Constitutional liberty. This is especially true in light of Congress denying former President Trump's offer to have 20,000 soldiers stationed around the capitol on January 6th. 

Click Here or use the URL below

https://townhall.com/columnists/victordavishanson/2022/01/06/who-are-the-real-insurrectionists-n2601486     

 

For San Francisco and California, "The Chickens Are Coming Home to Roost!"

    As the racist minister of Barack and Michelle Obama—Jeeremiah Wright—graphically proclaimed to his crowed Black Liberation Theology church in Chicago some years ago when he decried American foreign policy, “The chickens are coming home to roost!” The repeated nightly attacks upon multiple businesses in the San Francisco Bay area are simply the logical consequences of that city’s Progressive Left policies. Since 1964 the city has not had a Republican mayor, and a progression of ultra-liberal ordinances and Progressive liberals have pretty much turned the once-beautiful city into a third world Soddom and Gemorrah. The untreated mentally ill and drug-induced addicts are everywhere—generally left to fend for themselves on the streets. Public vagrancy is a menace. Laws against public urination and defecation have been done away with, making the city a real health risk. As a sanctuary city, local ordinances have made it impossible for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement to arrest criminals who have committed all types of felonies upon the law abiding citizens who pay the taxes there. Students at Berkeley and other liberal post-secondary routinely call for defunding the police. Its prosecuting attorney, Chesa Boudin—the son of Weather Underground terrorists who left three police officers dead from a heist in 1981—has refused to prosecute career criminals and repeat offenders. In the hope that the city can still be saved, he is now facing a recall election by outraged citizens. 

     The city’s decline cannot be attributed, as some claim, to the harmful effects of Covid. In 2015 there were 60,491 complaints to police, but only 125 people were arrested.  “The city took 25,899 reports of car break-ins in 2015,” The San Francisco Chronicle reports. This represented a 77 percent increase over the five years beginning in 2010. 

     Even liberals seem to have had enough! For years, The Atlantic has warned visitors to the city were seeing hundreds of rental cars broken into and cameras, luggage, passports, and personal items stolen by ‘smash and grab’ thieves. The New York Times reports, “Recent data from the F.B.I. show that San Francisco has the highest per-capita property crime rate of the nation’s top 50 cities.” In 1919 Edelman Intelligence reported in a poll that 63% of California millennials now wish to leave the state. CNBC also ranks the state 48th in cost of doing business, which may be why thousands of firms are leaving California for friendlier locales. In 2016, McKinsey Global Institute reported that half of California households cannot afford the cost of housing in their local market. 

     As a never-ending list of Progressive policies continues to rock the city and state, more and more Americans have come to the realization that almost all of the injuries are self-inflicted. Will things turn around in the Bay City? As more and more sane people pack up and leave for Red State America, the best guess is that things will only get worse.   

____  

Jack Bovee

Fort Myers, FL 
The writer has been a social studies educator, founder of Rho Kappa--the National Social Studies Honor Society--and a former Elementary School Principal of the Year in Lee County, Florida. He may be reached at: jsbovee@aol.com.

 

Dr. Ted Thornhill: Wrong Again!

 The following letter was sent to the Ft. Myers News-Press "comments section" following the publication of FGCU Professor Ted Thornhill's guest OP ED attacking Governor DeSantis for his attempt to curtail violent student protests similar to those that resulted in approximately $2 Billion damage to countless cities across America in 2019.  An earlier submission of a more professionally written rebuttal OP ED to Dr. Thornhill was ignored by the News-Press, hence my use of the much abbreviated "comments" section to weigh in on his inane ideas.   (The original OP ED may be accessed here: https://www.news-press.com/get-access/?return=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.news-press.com%2Fstory%2Fopinion%2F2021%2F03%2F24%2Fcritical-race-theory-ron-desantis-florida-ted-race-relations-thornhill-fgcu%2F6982525002%2F . )

Letter to the News-Press Editor: "On Dr. Ted Thornhill's Promotion to the Editoral Board"

 

Rebuttal to Dr. Brandon T. Jett

The following was written in response to Southwest Florida Colliege history professor Brandon T. Jett's guest editorial opinion in the Ft. Myers News-Press on May 20, 2021.  His editorial--“Colleges and Universities are not sites of liberal indoctrination” -- may be accessed "HERE."     

Dr. Brandon T. Jett’s claim that today’s colleges are “largely” not bastions of liberal indoctrination is so fundamentally off-target that one wonders how the local history professor could have it so wrong.  Jett writes that today’s campus faculty is “as diverse as the communities” they serve is ludicrous and easily disproven.  Study after study has shown college faculty to be overwhelmingly liberal, especially in the humanities. Due to this fact, even liberal professor-researchers such as Jonathan Haidt are alarmed.  Simply Google the phrase “how academia’s liberal bias is hurting research” and many studies will appear, some going back for decades. Nearly all the faculty in many of the fields within the humanities are Leftists. Today, advocates of Critical Race Theory argue we should turn our nation upside down due to the “unconscious bias” of whites, yet 82% of the college faculty in one study revealed “they would be at least a little bit prejudiced against a conservative [job] candidate.” This is a conscious bias that Dr. Jett won’t discuss. Nor did he address the fact that “More Than Two-Thirds of Conservative Academics Report Political Bias.” This survey, sent to over 40,000 professors, reported pervasively hostile abuse and discrimination against conservatives.  Some colleges of education are threatening to bestow diplomas upon students who lack ‘woke’ understanding.  Entire classes of freshmen are required to attend “woke” orientations where they indeed indoctrinated to a certain worldview. Dr. Jett knows full well that Howard Zinn’s famously un-American and deliberately leftist book, “A People’s History of the United States,” became one of the most sold volumes in publication history because so many college professors used it as required reading. If colleges were not bastions of indoctrination, why would so many be engaged in shutting down free speech? Why would organizations such as “Campus Reform” or “Foundation for Individual Rights in Education [F.I.R.E.] exist? Perhaps Dr. Jett should visit their webpages.

     Dr. Jett claims that “there are strong contingents of conservative faculty” but not in the fields of education, the humanities, or even today in the schools of Business, Engineering or the Sciences — all of which are increasingly coming under the sway of Leftist administrators and faculty. Professor Jett avows that “for every class on economic, social and racial problems, there are courses that explore the moral and ethical foundations of capitalism.” But will these courses have an adequate exposure to the benefits of free-markets or will there be a clearly Marxist bent to them? To answer this requires only an examination of approved and rejected quest lecturers and commencement speakers. Condoleeza Rice, Ayan Hirsi Ali, Ben Shapiro, Mike Pence all banned or heavily protested while race-baiters such as Ibram X. Kendhi, Al Sharpton and Robin D’Angelo, noted terrorists such as Leila Khalid, and self-avowed communists such as Angela Davis are invited and celebrated. Nor does his claim explain why so many of today’s institutions of higher learning have succumbed to the old adage of Jesse Jackson’s chant when he visited Berkeley a generation or two ago, “Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho—Western Civilization has got to go!” The once-required “survey” courses in American history and Western Civilization were long ago replaced with Far-Left ‘elective course’ requirements or with newly required “Social Justice” courses.  And as Heather MacDonald has repeatedly made clear, some of the most highly paid and influential college administrators are the Directors of Diversity and Inclusion—virtually none of whom can be viewed as conservative.  Nor does Professor care to comment on the idea of some at Harvard to revoke the degrees that institution has bestowed upon influential conservative graduates. And yet Dr. Jett wants his readers to believe Harvard really does believe in diversity!? 

      Professor Jett’s argument that Governor DeSantis and Byron Donalds did not graduate from Florida’s universities as avowed liberals isn’t convincing evidence such bias doesn’t exist.  That far too many of our students ARE is more evident from the $2 billion in damages caused mostly by leftist college students around the country last summer!

Jack Bovee

Ft. Myers

The writer has been a social studies educator, founder of Rho Kappa—the National Social Studies Honor Society--and a former elementary school principal.  He may be reached at JSBovee@aol.com. 

The Hypocrisy of the Left – Presidential Portrayals

I remember growing up in the eighties as a teenager seeing HBO’s show Not Necessarily the News constantly making fun of Ronald Reagan’s age and portraying him (prematurely I might add) as a nonsensical senile old man (he was 77 at the end of his second term). In fact, I remember Dennis Miller doing a joke around the beginning of Reagan’s second term where Dennis stated that his family would not let their grandfather be in charge of the remote control, and yet we as a nation were giving the presidency to Ronny. By the way, Joe Biden just began his first term as President at the age of 78 years old.

Flash forward to 2001 with George W. Bush and his constant portrayal by the media as some dim-witted cowboy. Comedian Will Ferrell portrayed our 43rd President in a one-man Broadway show with an unflattering depiction to say the least. Previous to that we had to hear about how dumb Vice Presidential candidate Dan Quayle was by the self-contradictory comedian George Carlin.

The point is that the mainstream media, and the Left in general, for decades now, have consistently presented a skewered view of Republican politicians as buffoons, and Democrats as supremely enlightened beings. Now it is 2021 and we have a legitimately impaired, feeble, and barely sentient person in the White House, and the cowards that inhabit Saturday Night Live, or the plethora of late-night TV talk shows, refrain from mining this vast endless pit of potential comedic material because their politics forbid it. 

Following are just some examples of the ‘Big mans’ gaffes over the years:

Three decades ago, Biden’s verbal attack on a voter at a New Hampshire house party helped derail his first presidential campaign. When Claremont, New Hampshire high-school teacher Frank Fahey asked Biden what law school he attended, the then-senator from Delaware responded, “I probably have a much higher IQ than you do, I suspect.” Biden snapped as he expounded on a glittering academic record that reporters later found was largely manufactured. The exchange, captured by C-Span’s cameras, resurfaced months later when Biden was revealed as a serial plagiarist going back to his college days. He abandoned his White House bid soon after.

In 2006, as he explored a second presidential run, Biden’s penchant for racial insensitivity resurfaced. “In Delaware, the largest growth in population is Indian-Americans, moving from India,” he told one voter. “You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. And I’m not joking,” he added with a grin. Indian-American groups objected to what they called “embarrassing, stereotypical comments.” “We do appreciate knowing what he really thinks of his Indian-American constituents,” said Dr. Raghavendra Vijayanagar of the Indian-American Republican Council.

Then he said this about Barack Obama while running against him in 2007, “I mean, you’ve got the first sort of mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean.” 

Back in October of 2008 in Athens, Ohio, at a rally, Biden said, “Look, John’s last-minute economic plan does nothing to tackle the number one job facing the middle class, and it happens to be, as Barack says, a three-letter word, jobs: J-O-B-S.”

During a 2008 campaign rally in Missouri Biden told a paraplegic man to stand up, “I’m told Chuck Graham, state senator, is here. Stand up Chuck, let ‘em see you. Oh, God love you. What am I talking about? I’ll tell you what, you’re making everybody else stand up, though, pal. Stand up for Chuck!”

In February 2009, Biden showed his mathematic prowess when discussing the economic stimulus package, “If we do everything right, if we do it with absolute certainty, there’s still a 30% chance we’re going to get it wrong.”

In March 2010, a cranky Biden scolded American troops for their tepid response to a set-up applause line, “Clap for that, you stupid bastards,” the vice-president barked, minutes into his speech to the 380th Air Expeditionary Wing stationed in Abu Dhabi. Biden was seeking kudos for his “incredibly good judgment” in having nominated one of the group’s officers to the Air Force Academy - but his pronouncement was met with crickets. “Man, you are a dull bunch,” he complained.

Unbelievably in August 2012, Biden said this to a black audience in Danville, Virginia regarding Mitt Romney and the GOP, “They’re going to put you all back in chains.” How he was able to get away with that one is truly remarkable.

Voters cringed through the vice-presidential debate between Biden and Republican Paul Ryan in 2012, as the hyper-aggressive veep interrupted Ryan 85 times with sudden guffaws and dismissive interjections - a heckling strategy much like the one that Donald Trump turned on Biden in their first debate.

Biden’s apparent cluelessness about racially sensitive language has repeatedly landed him in hot water. One day after Kamala Harris scorched him for his past opposition to racially integrating schools through busing in a June 2019 debate, Biden scrambled, “We’ve got to recognize that a kid wearing a hoodie may very well be the next poet laureate,” he told members of Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition - “not a gangbanger.” In seeking to dispel damaging stereotypes, critics said that Biden reinforced them. “This is just another example of lessons that Joe Biden shouldn’t have to learn,” remarked New Jersey Senator Cory Booker.

“I am a gaffe machine,” Joe Biden admitted in December 2018. “I will develop some disease and say I have to resign,” he told CNN, as Harris shook her head in bewilderment. In March 2018 he also espoused, that he would “beat the hell out of” President Trump.

A town hall speech in August 2019 with the Asian and Latino Coalition in Des Moines, Iowa set the stage for a stunning Biden blunder, “We should challenge students in these schools to have Advanced Placement programs. We have this notion that somehow if you’re poor you cannot do it. Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids.” After a pause, he realized his faux pas. “Wealthy kids, black kids, Asian kids,” he revamped. “No, I really mean it, but think how we think about it.”

In February 2020 Biden referred to a Mercer University economics student Madison Moore, 21, as a “lying dog-faced pony soldier” on national TV.

In December 2020 he exploded at an Iowa Democrat who challenged him with some impertinent questions. “You’re a damn liar, man,” Biden sputtered in an eruption of insults. Later, one reporter chided him for the flare-up. “You talk about needing to restore civility,” she began. “It’s not civil to call someone who lied a liar?” Biden responded. 

In 2020, Biden stumbled over his words as he attempted to recite the Declaration of Independence ahead of Super Tuesday, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, all men and women created by — you know, you know, the thing.” He also accidentally referred to Super Tuesday as "Super Thursday."

On February 10, 2020 Biden called a woman a, “lying, dog-faced pony soldier” at a campaign stop in New Hampshire.

In March 2020 Biden got into a verbal spat with a factory worker telling him he was “full of sh-t” when the worker accused Biden of trying to take away Second Amendment rights. Later during the same exchange, the worker told Biden, “You’re working for me, man” and Biden replied, “I’m not working for you. Give me a break, man. Don’t be such a horse’s ass.” 

In May of 2020, while appearing on the Breakfast Club, a New York City-based radio show, Biden brazenly asserted, "Well I tell you what, if you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or Trump, then you ain't black."

In his first and very delayed press conference in late March 2021, he came across as confused at times losing his train of thought, “…if you hold near and dear to you that you uh, um, like to be able to um ... anyway … we’re ready to get a lot done.”

In April 2021 he stated, “You walk into a store and you buy a gun you have a background check. But you go to a gun show, you can buy whatever you want and no background check,” which is untrue. He also repeatedly referred to the ATF as the “AFT” in a speech on April 9, 2021.

While rolling out a set of executive orders on gun control in April of this year, he said, “No amendment to the Constitution is absolute.” He did not elaborate if that included the 13th amendment abolishing slavery or the 16th Amendment regarding Federal income taxes or the 19th Amendment addressing voting.

In regards to Georgia’s new voter integrity law, Biden referred to it on national news as “Jim Crow on steroids” and suggested that Major League Baseball (MLB) pull the All-Star game out of Atlanta, which they did. Incidentally, the Left-leaning Washington Post assigned Biden four Pinocchios for falsely stating things like the Georgia law “ends voting hours early” when in fact the bill extends them. Interestingly, not only does Denver have only 15 days of in-person early voting versus Georgia’s 17 days, but Atlanta is 51% black and less than 10 % of Denver is black. So, in other words, the roughly $100 million dollars lost to the majority-black city of Atlanta vis-à-vis the MLB All-Star game will now be going to the overwhelmingly white city of Denver.

Sadly, anyone old enough to recall when Biden entered politics in the early seventies, knows that he has had a long history of controversial stances. During his first term as senator in 1977, Biden was outspoken in regards to busing students to desegregated schools lamenting the fact that his children would be subjected to a “racial jungle.” Again, how he gets away with this sort of thing in a cancel culture that throws people under the bus for a 10-year-old tweet they put out when they were teenagers is perplexing to say the least. For a man who ran on the promise of a return to political decorum, Biden has a long history of bigoted cracks, public put-downs, and angry outbursts.

Despite the fact that this pattern of his has been going on for more than a few decades, there is a possible explanation as to why it has gotten so much worse recently. It has been alleged that the President may in fact have Alzheimer’s disease. Here is a short list of some of the symptoms one is afflicted with regarding this terrible disorder. Ask yourself if Biden meets any or all of these criteria: memory loss, difficulty in communication (especially finding the right words), reduced ability to organize or reason, confusion and disorientation, difficulty with coordination and motor functions (think stairs), changes in personality and behavior (like getting angry and raising your voice for no reason during a speech), and mood swings (as in threatening to beat someone up). This pattern could go on and on, and probably will. In fact, in 2020, even Barack Obama warned Democrats, “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f*** things up.” 

Jean-Marc Bovee, Pharm.D. retired
St. Louis, MO